Exercise to take six long years to plug revenue losses
JULIAN D’CRUZ
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
PANJIM: An exercise which could have pooled in revenue for Goa to the tune of nothing less than Rs 80 crore today, is going to take six long years before it plugs its revenue losses caused by leakages in water supply lines, faulty meters and illegal connections.
Data has it that in Goa 160 MLD out of the 400 MLD manufactured and supplied daily is unaccounted for due to the three key problems faced in the distribution and metering system.
“It is going to take about six years to bring down the loss due to Non Revenue Water (NRW) and the unaccounted water to the norms prescribed by the Government of India,” said Project Director AM Wachasundar when contacted by this paper. The PWD through Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) has entered the third year of its second major project for Goa to plug water leakages.
The actual implementation of the tedious exercise begins this year through creation of cluster areas to tackle all kinds of problems associated with water loss, so as, to bring down the NRW from 40 per cent to the central norms of 20 per cent.
The target is to cover 2.50 lakh existing connections during the next six years by identifying the problem areas and solving the same through a foolproof system.
“This way, we will be able to reduce the NRW between 2 to 4 per cent annually so as to reduce the same by 20 per cent,” said the project director.
The actual revenue benefits will be derived from the sixth year to the tune of Rs 27 crore and the net revenue income pegged at Rs 13 crore from the water that is saved and metered. In addition, it will help in avoiding requirement of additional infrastructure in the water supply sector and also reduce waste water generation. According to officials, JICA is supporting the Capacity Development project through Overseas Development Assistance by providing both training and equipment.
So far, as many as 30 field staff in Goa under the PWD has received the required training in Japan.
Wachasundar said that on an average 35,000 connections will be under the scanner per year after conducting detailed surveys, preparing GIS base maps, and other high tech equipment such as leakage sound detectors to identify the problems. Much of the exercise will have to be conducted past midnight for effective results.
“The leakages will be plugged, faulty meters changed and illegal connections disconnected,” the project director said.
A pilot project dealing with 6000 connections already been tried out and test results are expected by end of June this year.
